Natural Kinds, Social Constructions, and Ordinary Language

Abstract

I argue for the importance of clarifying the distinction between metaphysical, semantic, and meta-semantic concerns in the discourse of what Emotion is. This allows us to see that those involved in the Scientific Emotion Project and the Folk Emotion Project are in fact involved in the same project – the Science of Emotion. It also helps us understand why questions regarding the natural kind status of Emotion, as well as answers to questions regarding the value of ordinary language emotion terms or concepts to emotion research, will not help resolve the observed crisis in the Science of Emotion.

Keywords

• emotion
• social construction
• natural kind
• philosophy
• psychology
• interdisciplinary
• philosophy of science
• putnam